Protestant Reformation on Marriage

Interesting comment from New Donkey...

"I've always found this rather ironic, since the Protestant Reformation, to which most Christian Right leaders continue to swear fealty, made one of its own touchstones the derogation of marriage as a purely religious, as opposed to civic, obligation. Virtually all of the leaders of the Reformation denounced the idea of marriage as a scripturally-sanctioned church sacrament, holding that baptism and the Eucharist were the only valid sacraments. Luther called marriage "a secular and outward thing,"which he did not mean as a compliment. Calvin treated marriage as a "union of pious persons," and while he did consider marriage a "covenant," he used the same term for virtually every significant human relationship.

More tellingly, throughout Protestant Europe, from the earliest days, one of the most common "reforms" was the liberalization of divorce laws. And even today, in America, conservative Protestants have the highest divorce rates of any faith community, or un-faith community."

http://www.newdonkey.com/

the 11/19/04 4:30PM Post

Different Protestant churches have different numbers of sacraments, all (I think) include baptism and most include communion (or Lord's Supper, or whatever they choose to call it), some also include ordination. (And some have these observances but don't call them sacraments.) But only the Catholic church holds marriage to be a sacrament, as far as I know. It may also be a sacrament in the Eastern Orthodox churches, I'm not as familiar with them.